A new variant of the virus that causes COVID is spreading in the U.S. The “Cicada” variant, officially known as BA.3.2, was first detected in South Africa in November 2024. But infection rates in the U.S. have been slowly rising since last fall, according to a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
Cicada is notable because it has a highly mutated genetic sequence that some experts fear could enable it to evade some of our immunity from vaccination or a past COVID infection. And it appears to be primarily infecting kids—though it's not causing more severe disease.
The variant had been detected in 23 countries as of February, the CDC’s report states. The agency’s genomic surveillance program first detected the variant in the U.S. last June in a traveler from the Netherlands. It later showed up in nasal swabs from four travelers, three samples of airplane wastewater, five clinical samples from patients and 132 wastewater samples from 25 states, according to the report, which was published on March 19 in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
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The BA.3.2 variant has around 70 to 75 mutations in the genetic sequence of its spike protein (the protein the virus uses to infect cells) relative to the strains that were included in last fall’s COVID vaccines: the JN.1 variant and its descendent LP.8.1. And in laboratory studies, the Cicada variant was able to evade antibodies, “highlighting the need for ongoing genomic surveillance and observational evaluations of vaccine and antiviral effectiveness,” the report’s authors write.
Still, Cicada accounts for only a tiny fraction of COVID cases in the U.S.—fewer than 0.2 percent of sequences collected from December 1, 2025, through February 11, 2026. And it hasn’t been linked with higher COVID cases overall.
While COVID is no longer as serious as it was during the pandemic’s early years, it nonetheless caused an estimated 390,000 to 550,000 hospitalizations and 45,000 to 64,000 deaths during the 2024–2025 respiratory virus season—and preliminary estimates of 110,000 to 210,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 to 37,000 deaths between October 1, 2025, and March 21, 2026—according to CDC data.
Editor's Note (4/3/26): This article was added after publication to include information about the variant's prevalence in children.
